Sunday, 7 June 2015

Guanajuato 6: Mexico Elections—a polling place

The Australian Government's travel advice was to avoid polling stations in Mexico because of risk of violence. This would certainly be the case in some parts of the country.

Nevertheless, here in Guanajuato, Guanajuato we thought risk would be low. We expected we would need to find a school with a polling place. We walked down Calle San Roque from our house on Sunday 7 June... and there before our eyes in the Plaza San Roque was the local polling station, open from 10am to 1pm. We were just in time before they closed.

Down the wall, on the left

The job of the polling place staff is straightforward inasmuch as individuals have voter registration cards and are marked with indelible ink after voting.

We had come down the California coast through Humboldt County and among the intellectual and social tendrils of Humboldt University and we e...

Aztec Venus: Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli

"...the ancient Mexicans had calculated accurately that the orbits of the earth (c.365 days), the moon (c.260 days) and Venus (c.584 days) come together only once every 104 years (two Aztec ‘bundles of years’ or centuries’). Their knowledge of time and its cycles was truly stunning."

This was a place to store resources before travelling, then came live in Mexico on 26 May 2015

I find a blog concentrates the mind while travelling, Unlike our blogs of travel to Italy and Japan, I'm not familiar with Mexico, but increasingly aware of the immense social, political and historical complexity. So this blog begins well before we depart...

Some reading resources on the education reform issues sparking vioence and the drug war